LET’S FLY is a photographic project developed in Italy between 2022 and 2023, born with the intention of narrating how humans being can go beyond the limits imposed by their physical reality, without passively accepting them.
The images presented in this project and the human stories they investigate speak, albeit silently, of the tremendous effort that has always distinguished the human being, being its specific distinctive sign. That movement or will or intentionality aimed at going beyond nature, beyond biology, due to the impossibility for humans to be like animals that passively accept the biological nature they are part of.
Human beings, on the contrary, have always had to try to overcome their material reality in order to express and realize their specifically human nature, which is non-material, that is, psychic. Unlike animals, abundantly endowed by nature with biological requirements for survival, from birth, humans must surpass the gigantic material limits imposed by biology.
Human being is born defenseless but with the spark of his non-material reality, that is, psychic, and this will be the distinctive mark of individual life as well as of human history. The images in this project tell of man who, to be himself, does not resign himself to his personal physical reality, determined by more or less unfavorable circumstances, but always seeks to conquer the freedom to fly beyond the obstacle that nature represents.
In this sense, the images of the project could legitimately mix with those of ancient pioneers who wanted to bring their gaze closer to the stars or see invisible microorganisms or fly high in the sky or navigate the depths of the sea. They testify above all to the incredible vitality of the human capacity to imagine: if these athletes have done and acted, it is because they imagined it first, that is, they thought humanly.
Humanly, because only human beings can imagine the impossible.
The project presented in the following pages is articulated in 4 sections, each related to a different discipline of Paralympic sports. Each section has a title and concerns either an individual sport or a team sport.
Regarding individual sports, the project tells the story of a female athlete, Martina Caironi, specializing in the 100m and long jump (category T42) of Paralympic athletics, and a male athlete, Federico Bassani, specializing in breaststroke and freestyle (category S11) in Paralympic swimming.
Regarding team sports, the project tells the story of the wheelchair basketball team of ASD Giovani e Tenaci di Roma and that of the 5-a-side football team for the blind of ASD Roma2000, also from Rome.
In all cases, what the project aims to communicate and transmit is the great strength of these athletes, their unbeatable resilience, and their ability not to be discouraged in the face of events, even dramatic, in life.
As the author, I would like to thank everyone who participated in the project, not only for making it possible but above all for giving me the opportunity to have a wonderful experience that has forever changed my approach to life.